You are probably right that this is the wrong place. The Uni where I used to work decided to be a "major player in Europe", then proceeded to construct a web page system highly reliant on ~ ... which does not appear on most European keyboards, so could not be typed easily!

Dealing with saving, autosaving, and version control is always a weakness in compilation systems. Plato is no worse, and often much better, than others I have seen.

Microsoft Office is often used as a style guide, but contains bad as well as good features.

I have experimented by changing a few of the numbers, now that you have indicated what they mean.

If I change the third digit to a 0 for one of two opened files, then only one file shows when you start Plato, but the view problem still occurs. However, something odd is going on with the last two digits. Plato seems to want to set them to 1280 and 768, which is not my screen resolution:

But I still get the same view problems regardless, it seems, of what I set these last 2 numbers to.

Similar behaviour occurs if I set my screen resolution to 1280 x 768. Plato then wants to set the last two numbers to 960 x 636.

Things are slightly different if I am working in Plato so that the Window is not maximised: in that case, although I still get a blank code window, the window is at least the right size now (i.e., I don't get the thick bar between the file tabs and the menu buttons). And the text menu bar still has to be restored by hitting the Alt button.

Last edited by simon on Thu Oct 10, 2013 2:04 pm; edited 1 time in total

Have you found a way of recovering from the "think bar between the file tabs and the menu buttons" ?
My only recovery is to restart PLATO.
Recovering from the coloured window problem is easy when 2 files are open, by just selecting the other file.

These are intermittent problems. I'm not sure what is required for them to occur. Possibilities are:
 They always occurs when returning from Plato minimised, using the Start bar.
 Plato maximised or Restore Down, both appear a possibility when occurring.
 Having multiple files open (is typical use of Plato)
 Having an Output or Find Results window open (is typical)

Ive just tried all these possibilities and Plato did not fail.

It might be good to have a command log available to review when the problem occurs (assuming the problem is related to the Plato command history)

I actually get more problems on my Notebook, which I sometimes run with 2 screens, but not always.

Not sure how to proceed from here. I think John's problem is different from Simon's (the symptoms may be similar but the fix will be in a different place in the code).

Maybe the first step will be to provide a version of Plato with a Refresh action on an accelerator key. This kind of problem is often fixed by refreshing the screen and if this is the case here then we will have made some progress.

Don't be confused by my remarks regarding the symbol that doesn't appear on the Italian keyboard I am using today! Old dogs like me find things by typing them, using standard search facilities (DIR *.FOR). Only people decades younger than me use the full facilities of Windows. I learnt my Fortran first in the (late) 1960s!

I don't care about Plato, as it is too complicated for me (although I liked bits when I tried it). My editor looks after saving when I tell it to, and I do version control myself, using subdirectories. Perhaps it is easy for me, as I only have seven applications, and only about 3000 subprograms .... (mostly Clearwin callbacks, as I only have about 50 subroutines that do anything else, and most of them haven't changed much since circa 1990).

I've never succeeded in eliminating the thick bar except by closing and reopening Plato.

The problems still occur if Plato is not maximised except that the windows are restored to the correct size. It seems that a refresh view would work. When Plato is restored the code window is blank, and the menu items and file tabs are invisible, but Ctrl-F6 restores the menu items and tabs, and a second Ctrl-F6 restores the code.

Also, I've tried having Plato open on half the screen and Windows Explorer on the other half so I can move between the two and open the .ini file while keeping Plato still in full view. As soon as I click on Windows Explorer to open the .ini file, the menu item and tabs are restored in Plato, but the code window remains a blank. In fact even if only Plato is restored (non-maximised), and you click on the desktop, this partial refresh of all but the code window works.

Sorry, this is not intended to hijack the thread. I have also noticed the issues noted above with attempting to maximize Plato from the Windows 7 taskbar. What works perfectly for me is to hover over the Plato icon, select the code file of interest, and then right click and hit maximize. Plato then restores normally.

I have a new problem when editing code with an underscore, that the underscore to the right of the change does not move as the text is changed. The underscore remains with the text on the line below.
I'm not sure how long this has been occuring, although I have only noticed it for the last few weeks.
Should I try to change the font ?

I doubt it. It is very usual for us to be able to fix a problem that we cannot reproduce. You can try if you wish. This thread has got so long that I have forgotten what the problem is.

Unfortunately this screen display problem can not be described as "very usual", as it has not gone away. Resize does not fix all the problems, especially the colour band below the menu, when the only fix is to exit Plato and start again.
It could be related to 2-screens but I think it can also appear on the PC which has only 1 screen.
What is definite is that the (vertical) location of the file windows becomes corrupted.
Interestingly, the pop-up preview from the start bar does not show the problem, but it does occur when the window is selected.
Next time it occurs I will send another screen dump.

I have finally found a way to get rid of the problem of vertical shrinkage to the code display window. This is being caused by the standard toolbar. It becomes 4 levels high. To correct, I turn off the standard toolbar, then (I think I just) turned it back on. The big gap at the top disappeared.
There is a problem with the displayed height of the standard toolbar.
I also have the build toolbar displayed, but it was at the normal height. I dragged it around a bit to see if it would fix the standard toolbar, but no effect. Finally I turned the standard toolbar off and back on and the toolbar height was corrected, first under the build toolbar, then ok when I adjusted their position. I am reasonably sure the standard toolbar has an incorrect height property.

All this is on my new dell notebook (paid for myself) which has a screen resolution of only 1366 x 768, so it does not appear to be associated with high resolution dual screens.

If you can't find the problem from this I will do a series of screen dumps next time it occurs, hopefully replicating how I fix the problem.

I have a couple of observations about this. I also am running Win 7, and Plato is placed on my primary screen (1680x1050). I experience the "blank screen" after maximizing the Plato window.

1. I get the wide (4 levels high) blank are with the standard tool bar. Deselecting and re-selecting has no effect when the Standard toolbar is displayed.
2. The missing tabs can be recovered by selecting Window::Cascade, then maximizing one of the editing windows. All the tabs re-appear in the appropriate position.
3. With the wide bar visible (Select Standard Toolbar), selecting the Build Toolbar will cause 4 lines of build toolbar to be displayed, only the first line has selectable icons.
4. When performing a build, the Output window at the bottom scrolls, but not all the lines actually show up. I often see blank lines. If I scroll this window up or down, the blank lines re-appear with the actual data. Usually, this occurs when performing the final compile and link after a program change. It does not appear to occur when I build or rebuild my support library. The difference seems to be that I get a LOT of lines of warning messages both in the build compilation (expected) and the link step (a couple of missing routines and common block size differences).

While of some annoyance, it's not a major killer as far as I'm concerned. Thought I'd pass along my observations in case they might help someone, especially closing and restarting Plato.